We are fat, sick and tired because of the way we live. Doctors agree in theory that a healthier lifestyle is the key to prevention. But in practice they rely on drugs. The sane solution is being serious about tackling the cause.

So several million more people are going to be prescribed statins but the vigorous campaign to inject some sanity into statin use has bought into sharp focus the conflict of interests at the heart of our health system.

One is whether the risks of these drugs when taken by healthy people actually outweigh the benefit? What we do know is that the only data on this comes from the manufacturers themselves. Think banks being the sole source of information about payment protection insurance or relying entirely on energy company data to choose the best tariff. (Read More…)

Medical and other health professionals dealing with diet and nutrition are keen to stress that their advice is firmly evidence based, backed up by properly conducted research. It’s the thinking behind the proposal to make Weight Watchers available on the NHS.

But an investigation by one of our contributors Zoe Harcombe has discovered that there is no evidence supporting the most fundamental principle behind the advice they have been giving for decades about weight loss… (Read More…)

HealthInsightUK has a number of contributors who are experts in statins. Here three of them – Dr John Briffa, Zoë Harcombe and Aidan Goggins respond to the CTT investigation. They explain why side-effect data is unreliable and disagree about whether it is in the drug companies interest that the risk of side-effects is downplayed or is that part of cunning plan? (Read more…)